Jim Renacci, former Congressman and successful Ohio businessman, officially launched his campaign for Governor of Ohio in what promises to be a bruising 2022 GOP primary battle against incumbent Mike DeWine.
“This election, we have a choice to make. Do we want to become an economic powerhouse again and attract jobs and opportunity? Or do we keep going down the devastating DeWine route?” Renacci asked in a video explaining his motivation for launching the campaign.
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Murfreesboro announced Tuesday that they would be expanding their Juneteenth celebration to three days – but had nothing for Memorial Day. The Murfreesboro Parks and Recreation Department will oversee the Juneteenth festivities.
For the three-day Juneteenth celebration, the city displayed a specialized logo decorated with a black power fist and Pan-African colors. The announcement and logo were displayed on the city’s Twitter and Facebook accounts. The city didn’t post any announcements about Memorial Day on their website or social media platforms.
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When Fulton County, Ga., poll manager Suzi Voyles sorted through a large stack of mail-in ballots last November, she noticed an alarmingly odd pattern of uniformity in the markings for Joseph R. Biden. One after another, the absentee votes contained perfectly filled-in ovals for Biden — except that each of the darkened bubbles featured an identical white void inside them in the shape of a tiny crescent, indicating they’d been marked with toner ink instead of a pen or pencil.
Adding to suspicions, she noticed that all of the ballots were printed on different stock paper than the others she handled as part of a statewide hand recount of the razor-thin Nov. 3 presidential election. And none was folded or creased, as she typically observed in mail-in ballots that had been removed from envelopes.
In short, the Biden votes looked like they’d been duplicated by a copying machine.
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A lawsuit filed by a Shelby County Schools (SCS) principal placed on leave for warning students about social media censorship is making steady progress. As The Tennessee Star reported in January, Cordova High School Principal Barton Thorne had lectured students during a weekly “principal’s message” on the importance of free speech and the marketplace of ideas following the Capitol Hill riot, which he condemned.
Shelby County Board of Education (SCBE) reinstated Thorne the day that he filed the lawsuit against them. The Liberty Justice Center (LJC) is representing Thorne in the case, Thorne v. Shelby County Board of Education. In the lawsuit, Thorne alleged that SCBE violated his right to free speech and had damaged his career, reputation, and family through their response to the public and media.
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After less than 6 months, the number of illegal border crossings into the United States has spiked to a record not seen in well over a decade, according to Axios.
From October 1st, 2020, to May 31st of this year, almost 900,000 illegal aliens were stopped at the border by authorities. In the month of May, there were over 170,000 apprehensions of illegals, following the trends set by the months of March and April, which themselves marked 20-year highs in the number of illegal alien apprehensions.
Despite Joe Biden’s reversals of many of President Donald Trump’s successful immigration policies, the Border Patrol continues to turn away many illegals due to the ongoing threat of the COVID-19 virus. However, as Axios notes, illegals who are turned away for this particular reason often make several attempts to cross the border, with each failure counted as a separate rejection rather than a repeat offense, adding to the overall number.
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles in studio to highlight the great turnout for MuleFest over Memorial Day weekend.
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed Maury County Mayor and lover of freedom, Andy Ogles in studio to discuss the surprise Conservative community that came out for a Town Hall style meeting in Leipers Fork Monday night.
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The people who oppose the Nashville Taxpayer Protection Act this week began a paid media campaign to tarnish the Nashville Taxpayer Protection Act as the brainchild of “radical extremists.” But Nashville attorney Jim Roberts, one of the architects of the referendum, told The Tennessee Star this week that he and his supporters are currently crafting their own media counteroffensive.
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The Biden administration threatened to sue Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott if the state follows through with plans to stop working with the federal government to detain migrant minors, according to a letter from federal officials Monday.
Abbott issued a disaster declaration on May 31 that ordered all facilities operating on federal contracts to house migrants who entered the country illegally to close. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said Abbott’s declaration illegally discriminates against the federal government’s 52 state-licensed facilities operating in Texas to house unaccompanied migrant minors.
“The May 31 Proclamation discriminates against the Federal government by targeting the licenses held only by those entities providing shelter to ‘unlawful immigrants or other individuals not lawfully present in the United States under a contract with the federal government,’” according to HHS.
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The tidal wave of probability, circumstantial evidence of such mass and consistency that it is now almost irrefutable, that the novel coronavirus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, will alter China’s relationship with the world and particularly with the United States.
Accompanied as it is by the increasing volume of evidence that Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases—a post he has held for 37 years—and chief medical advisor to the president, went to unjustified lengths to deny that the coronavirus was anything but an unforeseeable escapee from a live food market, the unraveling story will ramify very widely. Seen as a whole, it has been an immense strategic victory for the People’s Republic of China. This victory is all the more remarkable because it was probably an extraordinary act of improvisation.
There is no reason to believe at this point that the Chinese authorities deliberately manufactured this virus and unleashed it mindless of the great damage it wrought among China’s civilian population. The great preponderance of evidence now is that the coronavirus was indeed manufactured, presumably for the purpose of enhanced research. As not infrequently occurs, it escaped, and while China imposed draconian measures to contain its spread among the Chinese population (and has never published believable figures about the extent of the harm that it did in China) it waited an unconscionable length of time before taking any measures to reduce its spread outside China.
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Clint Brewer and Mayor Andy Ogles in studio who pondered the interesting intersection that left-wing and right-wing are joining as conservative policy shows prevailing course.
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An international drug sting operation resulted in more than 800 arrests and 32 tons of drugs seized, the FBI and other top law enforcement agencies announced Tuesday.
The sting, titled Operation Trojan Shield, dates back to 2019 when the FBI and Australian Federal Police covertly developed the encrypted device company ANOM to replace two platforms that had been taken down by police, according to European Union law enforcement agency Europol. In search of a new encrypted software to use for communications, criminal gangs flocked to ANOM, which grew rapidly servicing more than 12,000 devices and 300 criminal syndicates across 100 countries.
“Encrypted criminal communications platforms have traditionally been a tool to evade law enforcement and facilitate transnational organized crime,” FBI Criminal Investigative Division Assistant Director Calvin Shivers said in a statement. “The FBI and our international partners continue to push the envelope and develop innovative ways to overcome these challenges and bring criminals to justice.”
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Tuesday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed liberal feminist and renowned author Dr. Naomi Wolf to the newsmakers line to weigh in on her recent permanent Twitter ban after questioning the COVID vaccines.
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Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) announced Monday that mental health clinicians will join officers on 911 calls through a Co-Response Crisis Intervention Program starting June 28. The pilot program was reportedly modeled after the Support Team Assistance Response (STAR) pilot program in Denver, Colorado.
“The MNPD’s first ever Co-Response Crisis Intervention [Program] (officers teamed with clinicians) begins 6/28. 16 officers from the North and Hermitage Precincts today begin 40 hours of crisis intervention training alongside Mental Health Co-Op staff in preparation for the start,” wrote MNPD.
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Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) joined Senators Rick Scott (R-FL) and Mike Braun (R-IN) in introducing a resolution to condemn the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in K-12 schools.
“Critical race theory has no place in American schools. The tenets of critical race theory are based in the destructive ideal of inherent racism and will teach our children to judge and self-segregate based solely on skin color,” Blackburn said. “Students should not be discriminated on the basis of race under any circumstances.”
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The Democrat-led Senate is poised to approve as early as Tuesday a China security bill that will earmark billions in taxpayer subsidies to the well-heeled computer chip-making industry, which saw record profits last year and doled out millions in lobbying fees and political donations.
The $54 billion in subsidies for chipmakers inside the 1,445-page U.S. Innovation and Competition Act has some seeing an unnecessary corporate welfare program that could benefit such iconic brands as Intel, Qualcomm and AMD and increase the government’s reach over free market business.
“This bill will increase government’s influence over the private sector while weakening America by increasing our debt,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), one of the legislation’s fiercest critics. “Democrats love spending other people’s money and growing government. I have no idea why any Republican would want to help them do that.”
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Many of the independent, undecided and even Democrat voters who chose Joe Biden over President Trump last November did so in hopes that his “moderate” demeanor would signal a return to some sort of “normalcy.”
However, from the moment he took office on January 20th, Biden has proven himself to be anything by moderate. So far Biden seems far more concerned with pandering to the “AOC” wing of his party while the American people pay the price.
On day one of his presidency, Biden rescinded permits for the Keystone XL pipeline, killing an estimated 40,000 high-paying American jobs with the stroke of a pen. He followed this blatant swipe at the American worker again last week by voicing his approval for Vladimir Putin’s plans to build a similar pipeline through Russia and Germany. Critics say this will only strengthen Russia’s dominance over Western Europe’s gas supply. All this while America went from energy independence under Trump, to gas shortages and price hikes under Biden. Lunch Bucket Joe supports Russian jobs over American workers. And we were led to believe the other guy was the “Russian asset.”
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Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) called for security changes — recommended by a January 6th report — to be implemented in order to prevent a situation similar to that day.
“The committees have laid out what happened and what should be reformed or reconsidered. It is now time to implement appropriate changes to make sure all relevant agencies are prepared to prevent an event like January 6 from happening again,” Senator Hagerty said in a statement.
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A new poll shows that the majority of American voters are deeply opposed to having critical race theory (CRT) principles being taught in schools.
The survey, conducted by Competitive Edge Research for Parents Defending Education, also shows that people overwhelmingly prefer Capitalism to Socialism (61.8% to 31.4%), frown upon “cancel culture,” (62.7% to 10.6%) and believe the United States is headed “on the wrong track” (60.7% to 32.8%).
Additionally, more respondents had a negative opinion of Black Lives Matter, than had a positive opinion (48.1% to 44.4%).
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Former U.S. President Barack Obama this week publicly praised Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Obama, during a CNN interview with Anderson Cooper, pondered the ramifications of the 2020 election and the election integrity concerns.
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The brother of Winston Smith, a wanted man who was shot and killed in an officer involved shooting incident after he pulled a gun on police, has spoken out about the need for police. He feels his brother’s death was an injustice but wants to work together with police to improve the justice system.
Winston Smith’s brother, Kidale Smith, was seen shaking hands and hugging police officers who were out on the streets monitoring the protests that had been taking place since his brother’s death. He reported that he felt like maybe the police officers needed a voice too.
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State Rep. Anthony Sabatini (R-32) announced his intention to run against U.S. Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-7) in Florida’s potentially newly drawn congressional district as a result of 2020 U.S. Census data and Florida picking up two additional congressional seats.
Sabatini is highly critical of Murphy and her policies which he says are a reflection of “corporate interest groups” in Washington.
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Democrat Miami City Commissioner Ken Russell announced Thursday his intention to challenge Sen. Marco Rubio for Rubio’s Senate seat in 2022. He has served in his current post since 2015 and will likely be considered a big underdog with little statewide recognition.
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Dennis Smith, an attorney and former Republican state legislator, announced his campaign for attorney general last week.
“I’m running for Attorney General to build a future Minnesotans deserve,” Smith said in a press release. “For too long, the office of Attorney General has been used for politics, and that must end!”
The position is currently occupied by Democrat Keith Ellison, whose office led the successful prosecution of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.
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A conspiracy theorist in Florida who gained recognition for falsely claiming that the state was underreporting COVID-19 deaths was banned from Twitter Monday.
Rebekah Jones was banned for the microblogging site for “platform manipulation.”
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Mike Collins, former candidate for Congress and trucking executive, officially launched his campaign on Tuesday to represent Georgia’s 10 Congressional District.
The seat which Collins is aiming for is being vacated by Congressman Jody Hice (R-GA-10). Hice, instead of running for reelection to Congress, has decided to begin a primary challenge attempt against embattled Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
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Former governor Terry McAuliffe will again be Virginia Democrats’ nominee for governor, according to the Virginia Public Access Project which called the race on Tuesday evening. Incomplete unofficial results showed McAuliffe soundly beating all four of his challengers.
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A bill passed by the Ohio House would eliminate a step businesses owners must take to file taxes with the state and local governments and free up time for those owners to create more jobs and increase business, according to the bill’s sponsor.
The legislation allows businesses to opt into a system run by the Ohio Department of Taxation to pay net profits taxes to the state, and the state notifies each municipality of the taxes. Currently, business owners can decide to be part of the state’s system but must notify municipalities themselves, instead of a one-time notification.
“The current system for filing municipal net profits tax in Ohio creates unnecessary paperwork for our hard-working business owners,” Rep. Bill Roemer, R-Richfield, said. “As if the complications of the tax code itself weren’t enough, the state also requires businesses to jump through unnecessary administration hoops to meet their tax obligations. This bill streamlines and simplifies this process, so our business owners can spend more time creating jobs and contributing to our local economies, instead of complying with burdensome filing requirements.”
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The Loudoun County Circuit Court ordered Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) to reinstate teacher Tanner Cross in a decision Tuesday. Cross is suing the Loudoun County School Board after he spoke at a school board meeting saying he would not use students’ preferred pronouns.
On Friday, the case had a lengthy hearing in the court where the defendants asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit; Cross’ team asked the court to issue a temporary injunction to allow him to return to work while the case proceeds.
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A supporter of Susan Opraseuth’s said Tuesday the candidate does not have a database of 330 delegates she needs as she campaigns to replace Fulton County Republican Party incumbent chair Trey Kelly — but she’s supposed to. Party members said this election pits Kelly, an establishment Republican, against Opraseuth, who strongly supports former U.S. President Donald Trump.
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Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s offices are adding 350,000 appointments, greeters at office doors to assist in scheduling visits, and priority service for residents needing a disability placard to clear a 13-month backlog during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We were able to do this after discussions with our frontline workers who, concerned about the chatter here in Lansing to revert back to a broken ‘take a number and wait’ system, suggested ways they could work harder and faster to be able to handle more transactions efficiently and quickly,” Benson said at an in-person press conference. “It’s an extraordinary testament not just to their dedication to the department but their recognition that having residents schedule their visits ahead of time is a vastly superior way of doing business.”
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Former President Trump endorsed Mike Carey on Tuesday in his campaign to represent the 15th Congressional District of Ohio.
Trump, who carried the district handily in 2020, weighed in on the race by saying, “He has my Complete and Total Endorsement!”
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Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) joined appeared Saturday night on “Unfiltered,” conservative commentator Dan Bongino’s new Fox News show, where he vowed to take local action against Critical Race Theory.
“We’re not going to support any Republican candidate for school board who supports Critical Race Theory in all 67 counties or supports mandatory masking of school children,” he said in the segment.
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The Virginia Supreme Court heard arguments for two lawsuits blocking the removal of the Lee statue in Richmond on Tuesday.
A year ago, protests sparked by Minneapolis’ police treatment of George Floyd spread across the country. In Virginia, those protests spurred politicians to start removing controversial Confederate monuments. Although Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney was able to quickly remove most of the monuments on Monument Avenue, the most famous monument — a huge statue of Robert E. Lee — sits on state property ceded to the state under conditions that have complicated efforts to remove the bronze general.
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Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN-05) has joined the progressive chorus in calling for the head of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who stated his opposition to H.R. 1 in an opinion piece over the weekend.
“The reason this bill has no Republican support is because it gets in the way of Republican plans to undermine elections. This bill protects our democracy from Republican attempts to dismantle it,” Omar said on Twitter, likening the Democrat to a member of the opposite party.
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Lipscomb University appears to have removed free access to their session featuring “How to Be Antiracist” author Ibram Kendi. The anti-racist thought leader is slated to appear as a guest speaker during the university’s Christian Scholars Conference this week.
Last Wednesday, The Tennessee Star registered with Lipscomb University for a link to Kendi’s webinar. The university made it clear that the session was open to the public. Following reporting from The Star on the event, the university closed the signup form. We never received the link that was promised.
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